In case you've been ignoring all things food around the city, the NYC Wine & Food Festival is coming up. I'm so excited, I'm am scouring the list over and over again like mad man. I can't seem to decide which event to attend! Also, does anyone have an extra Benjamin to spare? I'd appreciate it. Thanks.
Chicken Piccata is a wonderful, classic Italian dish. I've always enjoyed eating this dish because it has a nice, fresh tang which comes from the lemon-based sauce.
I was recently in San Francisco for a business trip. While most of my time there was spent in a convention center and in hotels, I was able to sneak out and try some of San Francisco's best restaurants. Here are a few of my favorites:
by Jessica Young, Amateur Guest Blogger from New York, NY
Wok + Wine. NYC loves a good pop-up. The pop-up shop, the pop-up food truck, the pop-up rainstorm….not really but the verbiage is used in local weather reports. So, it should come as no surprise (slight irony) that the pop-up party would indeed, pop up. Leave it to two media and marketing veterans to tap into the zeitgeist and package a social event that exploits both the ephemeral and the exclusive – two precarious ingredients when combined creates a combustible cocktail…and then, the party never dies.
Thus, inherent is the interest in word-of-mouth whispers heralding the innovators, the early adopters, urban professional movers & shakers, the creatives, and those who moonlight as socializers. When all these desirables convene under the pretense of a fleeting experience encapsulating “the sign of our times” what do you do with them? What magical entertaining dynamics shall tantalize?
Let’s check out the stellar stats for Wok + Wine: invitation by application or personal recommendation – check, obscure locale – check, maximum admittance of an intimate forty – check, forty enthused strangers – check, forty bottles of wine to lubricate small talk – check, forty pounds of whole jumbo shrimp – check? Checking out? Nope. Heads, legs, and tails all drenched in GARLICKY, greasy, orangey-red staining al ajillo sauce. Their little beady eyes just minor dots in a sea of slipping and sliding mountainous piles on a center collapsible (for pop-up purposes) communal table. The crowd circles round. Some dive elbows deep in the critters. Some cling to their wine glasses for self preservation – heads are gross! Some concentrate on conversation due to shellfish allergies because hey, it’s hard to pass up a pop-up. At varying levels of embrace for the full-bodied food, the guests perk up and the party livens. Perhaps it’s the alcohol hitting the blood stream. Or, perhaps it’s the novelty of novice beheading and de-legging shrimp that has Mr. Lawyer and Ms. Jewelry Designer chatting it up in the mutual awkwardness of achieving one laborious yet satiating bite. Logical reasoning would infer that serving guests shrimp al ajillo with nothing other than whole (unsliced) loaves of bread as the sole sidekick would be soiree suicide. The smell! Garlic certainly clings to breath and clothes alike. The mess! Throw conventional propriety out the window when shelling shellfish. There’s no pretty method to the madness. The sauce! Bright orange-red splatters incriminate shirts involved in the crustacean carnage. Yet, the party continues. Eventually even the most finicky abandon their wine glasses to get down and dirty.
There’s something about unusual experiences that when shared by a group automatically forms a bond, a commonality. A quintessential “we’re all in this together” situation. Beyond the event naturally garnering an outgoing segment of the population, the forced participation in an activity, especially an activity that pushes the boundaries of comfort for some, creates immediate camaraderie. The ultimate of ice-breakers, inhibitions crumble and connections arise when shrimp shrapnel flies. Make people do something weird together and, guess what, nothing weirder can happen. It takes the focus off of the tendency to be “on point”. Of course, after several glasses of free-flowing wine it’s a slippery slope into the succulent swamp, regardless. A welcome round of limoncello shots and refreshing pineapple slices later, the crowd is rollicking in conversation.
Of course, no ordinary experience would suffice. Although a pop-up draws demand from its time sensitive nature – poof it’s here, poof it’s gone - that in itself would not be enough to placate NYC’s notorious appetite for novelty. Mix in a bit of the unexpected with the ephemeral and the exclusive then ta da memories are made! Guaranteed Mr. Digital Start-Up can put a face to the name of Ms. I’m Wearing A White Shirt he inadvertently sprayed with sauce. Way to spice up the networking/dating/drinking/social scene! Oh, and the shrimp is damn delicious.
Yes, I did it. I bought Gwyneth Paltrow's new cookbook My Father's Daughter.
by Jesse Riggle, Amateur Guest blogger from New York, NY
(Photo on left is one of Jesse's work. His paintings appear in galleries from LA to NYC. Check out his work)
Hello there, my name is Jesse (not to be confused with your regular host). Jessica asked me to guest blog, so here are the words I have written.
I recently learned a valuable food-lesson, a lesson specifically of a food to avoid. The food in question: Okra. Now, before I get to far along I'd like to clear one thing up, I don't actually have anything against okra. In fact I have had okra that I quite liked. Pickled okra, okra at Indian restaurants, delicious. But, I still may never order it again. Let me tell you why (and some other stuff too).
First a brief back-story. A couple of my friends started a Brooklyn/Queens-centric eating club about a year ago. We ate at a great many restaurants with an abundance of good and interesting food. Nothing any of us would call a lemon ever cropped up, not a bad record for a year of new restaurants. Well, a week back (which happened to be nearly the 1 year anniversary) we went to a new place that was also across the street from the first place we ever went to, fortuitous? Fateful? Frightening? eh... The restaurant is called Buka and deals in Nigerian food.
The restaurant itself is perfectly nice. Roomy, a swell wait staff, a comfortable davenport, what more could you want in your first 5 minutes? They also presented us with a very intriguing cocktail list. I myself did not partake, as I have old-man tastes in alcohol (whisky, beer, and gin, please), but everyone else at the table thoroughly enjoyed their fare. A promising start, spirits were high.
Next up came the appetizers. I ordered some- thing. I don't really remember what it was but it had honey and cake in the name. What they gave me had no honey and was not very cake like either. In fact, upon my first bite I thought to myself and verbally stated, "This tastes like the zoo." Now, I have never eaten a zoo, but I imagine if you could eat a zoo it would taste like my appetizer. That might sound like an unpleasant flavour, but really, when the strangeness of it passed I quite enjoyed it. I like zoo's, they make me happy, and as it so happens, I would probably like to eat one. The rest of the appetizers on the table were also generally delicious. So far so good.
Then the main course... The moment when things started to get iffy. There was an equal split of people ordering whole fish or some variety of meat in a stew/sauce type setup plus fufu. Fufu is a starch, their answer to bread, it is pounded yam or cassava, formed into a ball. Myself, I ordered the goat with the fermented cassava fufu. I also ordered the okra sauce (remember when I mentioned I probably won't order okra again?). Well, in my excitement for the big bowl of food infront of me, I grabbed my fork, gave it a quick stir, and lifted said fork. A nice string of melted good came up with my fork, and I said, "Hey, there is cheese in this!" I love cheese, it might be my favorite. Then I thought about what I had said and it dawned on me there was probably no actual cheese in my bowl. Upon further inspection I discovered the whole thing was a big ol' bowl of slime. We're talking Ghostbusters slimer-slime here. Serious slime. I stared at it in disbelief, vaguely remembering an episode of Top Chef where Mr. Colicchio mentions his distaste for okra, for it being slimy.
I went full on squint-eyed suspicious staring at my food. I decided to go for it though. I got a big ol' scoop of okra on my fork and moved it toward my mouth. A long un-broken strand of slime still connected my fork to the bowl as I shoved it in my mouth. It was a mistake. My mouth and brain could not wrap themselves around this... stuff. I might have tried to spit it out but I think it was afixed to my tongue by this point. I did not give up though, I tried eat my food. I ate as much goat as I could, it still had the skin on it near as I could figure, and there was a bone in my bowl I could not identify. It looked like a check mark. I went so far as to look up anatomical drawings of goat skeletons trying to find this bone, I could not. A mystery. The saving grace to this whole debacle was the fufu. I was able to dunk the fufu in the slime and eat some of it. The flavours were all fine, but the solids and I guess liquids (of the non-Newtonian variety), were not in my palatablity-range. I was not alone in this, most people around the table agreed, that maybe the food was a little to authentic for our American mouths to handle.
After we finished, we all walked down the street to a soul-food restaurant for dessert. Good times. Seriously, good times, I enjoyed the whole night. The restaurant was a totally new food experience for me, and I am glad I went. If for nothing more than my appetizer that tasted like the zoo and my new found knowledge to never ever order okra again. Would I recommend the place? Sure why not, just stay away from the okra, and probably the goat too (and if you hate the food, there is soul food down the street).
The end!
*As a side not, I looked up Nigerian cuisine on the internet, and learned of a food they quite enjoy, that being draw soup. According to wikipedia: "typically [made] from okra or melon seeds. It gets its name from the thick nature of the broth; it draws out of the bowl when eaten". So it would seem this is what I had.
It's lent season for this amateur palate.
What is the lent season? It's the period of time for Roman Catholics between Ash Wednesday and Easter Sunday. During this time, you make preparations for Easter Sunday by praying, repenting and sacrificing.
And in terms of sacrificing, you'll find Catholics around the world denying themselves of pleasures or habits. Some give up smoking, others give up drinking.
I decided to go through the lent season without eating food from a restaurant, deli, fast food chain, or wherever. This means that I can't grab a quick bite to eat during lunch at work, I have to bring something I made at home. If I'm out and about throughout the day, I can't stop by a street vendor and grab a small snack. Everything I eat must be bought at a grocery store and prepared at my own home.
It sounds simple, but it isn't. I live in New York City where food from different parts of the world are offered in a wide range of prices. Food in this city is convenient, fun and varied. This will be a difficult lent season for me, but I'm looking forward to the challenge.
This will allow me, of course, to share more of my amateur cooking hours with you.
Wish me luck!
by Milesh Gordhandas, Amateur Palate guest blogger from Brussels, Belgium
An absolute must during a bitter cold winter is a trip to your local Chinatown for soup dumplings--warm pork dumplings with steaming broth inside. This is comfort food at its finest.
If you're in NYC, go to my favorite joint, Shanghai Cafe on Mott Street, where you'll pay $8.00 for eight large dumplings. Another local favorite is Joe's Shanghai on Pell Street, though there is always a long wait for a table.
Stay warm!
Ah, news of me and my amateur palate is spreading. When finding out about this blog, a colleague of mine gave me a cook book that the lovely ladies from the church of his home town in New Brighton, PA created. It features fun recipes from Eastern Europe, and his Croatian grandmother contributed a few.
I received permission to share one recipe on An Amateur's Palate, courtesy of my colleague's grandmother.
Enjoy!
Chicken with Sour Cream
2 1/2 or 3 lb. whole spring chicken, cut or already cut selected choice pieces.
1 c. of diced onions
1/2 c. shortening (or butter)
1/2 c. diced green pepper
1 tsp. salt
1/2 tsp. black or white pepper
1 tsp. paprika
1/4 tsp. cayenne pepper-optional
1/2 c. sour cream
1/4 tsp. marjoram
Saute onions in shortening. Add cut chicken, salt and pepper. Fry slowly covered for about 1/2 hour. Add diced green pepper and saute all for 10 minutes. Add paprika, cayenne pepper, marjoram and sour cream. Keep uncovered and fry 10 more minutes. If you desire you may add about a 1/2 c. more or less of boiling water for gravy.
Give it a try, and let me know how it turns out.
This blog write-up is dedicated to Daryl G. Grecich (1966-2011).
I recently dined at Salt Bar in downtown Manhattan. Salt Bar is a typical lower east side hang out that draws in neighborhood folks by offering $1 oysters. But unless I'm in New Orleans where oysters are abundant, I'm skeptical of any oyster offered at $1, especially if there is no information provided about its origin.
So, I opted to try their main menu instead. I ordered their poached flounder curry with carrots and spinach, which was priced at $19. It should have been priced at $2.
The "poached" flounder was actually a defrosted fish fillet. It had a bland, watery taste, which led me to believe that it was a few days old. The carrots sticks were taken straight from the snack bag. They were lazily thrown in the curry and were served raw (yes, raw!). The sauce itself had potential, but it was diluted by water from either the spinach or fish.
I couldn't believe that they offered a dish that received little to no care. Salt Bar is located in a neighborhood that offers very good food. If it doesn't reexamine the quality of its food and the execution of its dishes, I'm afraid it won't survive Manhattan's cutthroat restaurant industry.
Chicken Adobo is one of the most popular dishes in Filipino cuisine. The recipe to make it is also one of the most versatile, which the New York Times so eloquently reported earlier this month.
So, I thought I’d share my version of the dish, which I learned from my mother. It’s salty, sweet and sour—encompassing all the typical flavors of Filipino food. Here it is:
Ingredients
2 cloves of garlic
1/2 of a yellow onion
1 cup of water
3/4 cup of soy sauce
1/2 cup of white vinegar
2 bay leaves
4-5 large chicken breasts
1 tsp. of sugar
Sauté the onion and garlic until they sweat. Then, in high heat, put in the water, soy sauce, vinegar, bay leaves and sugar. Gently place the chicken breasts in the pan. When the mixture is boiling, lower the heat to medium and let it simmer for 45 minutes. Do not stir or mix the liquid while it’s cooking.
You’ll know the dish is finished when the liquid turns cloudy and the chicken is cooked. It’s best when it’s served the next day with white rice.
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